Facebook Watch: ‘Fifty Shades’ of Awesome

Monday Afternoon Update:Fifty Shades Darker manhandled the rest of the upcoming films on Facebook over the past week, coming in with more than 10 times the total new likes of the second place finisher: 589,680. It owed its surge to its first trailer which dropped last Tuesday. It also goes to show that while the buzz from the books might be waning there is still a ton of interest in the films. Looking back at the first trailer for Fifty Shades Of Grey in July of 2014, that managed to generate over 1.8 million new likes in the following week, trailer 2 had just over 1 million new likes in the week after release in November of 2014. Of course now the franchise is at over 10 million likes total so many fans in its wheelhouse have already liked the page so its hard to expect the same sort of response to trailers as the years roll on, but the drop-off is curious and warrants a closer look. The best comparison for the 50 Shades phenomenon is definitely Twilight which had a similarly fanatic following amongst women. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 saw over 1 million new likes in the week after its first teaser trailer was released in June of 2011, at a time when the franchise had over 20 million total likes. That gave it a very similar ~5% total bump to its like count which seems to indicate that there is hope that Darker could open to a very similar total to the first film since Breaking Dawn Part 1 managed a nearly identical opening to its predecessor The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Overall this first bump is refreshing for its backers no doubt that there still is significant interest online, but on the flip-side it would appear as though hoping for any sort of bump in its opening weekend grab might be a tall ask.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children continues to wow on Facebook where it has now secured over 650,000 total likes. For a net new film property opening outside of summer or the holiday season this is an impressive feat and really hints at a young adult breakout similar to The Maze Runner which had a very similar 719,521 likes the same distance before its September release in 2014.

Facebook Top 10 Movies by Like Increase for the last week Ending Sunday September 18